


How to Absolutely Fail at Saving the World

by extremelyperturbed



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - Crack, Comedy, Dubious Science, Hannibal keeps hitting on Will but Will is mad about the whole invasion thing, Silly, cannibalism jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 17:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extremelyperturbed/pseuds/extremelyperturbed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Just Another Alien Invasion, which was about Hannibal's people invading the Earth much to the surprise of Will, Beverly, Bedelia, Jimmy and Brian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Absolutely Fail at Saving the World

When Will woke up, he found himself in a very swank hotel room and wondered briefly if he was in the afterlife. He was disabused of that idea when Hannibal entered the room, carrying a tray full of food.

“What’s going on?” said Will.

“Breakfast,” said Hannibal. "Eggs, sausage, orange juice . . ."

“No, I mean . . .” Will threw off the covers, looked down and saw that he only had his boxers on. “Where are the rest of my clothes?”

“I threw them away and am getting you better ones.”

“You can’t just throw away my clothes!”

“But I already did.”

“Where’s everybody else?”

“They’re in another hotel room. I reunited Bedelia with her wine collection. She’s currently fending off the others from taking any of her bottles.”

“So, how are you going to eat me?”

“I don’t eat friends.”

“We’re not friends.”

“I know my civilization has just taken over your world but everything's going to be fine. I would stay and have breakfast with you but I have to go and issue some commands.”

“Command your people to get off my planet!” yelled Will.

“Your guard Lisa will take care of any requests,” said Hannibal as he left the room.

After Will ate breakfast as he was terribly hungry, he found a bathrobe and slippers that made him feel covered or at least more so. He walked over to the hotel door and opened it to find a female uniformed guard smiling at him.

“Are you done with breakfast?” Lisa said. 

“Yes but what I want is to see my friends.”

“Of course, anything that a guest of Prince Tenderheart wants.”

“That’s his name?” sputtered Will. “Tenderheart.”

“Yes, that’s his name.”

“Is that because he likes his hearts cooked tender or because he is a prince who feels deep kindness and compassion?” said Will.

The guard cheerily said, “It’s both.”

“How good is your English?” said Will.

“I am fluent in twelve of your Earth languages including English.”

Oh, crap, thought Will. The Chesapeake Ripper is considered by his own people to be unusually sweet. Will, however, cheered himself up with the idea that the name might be strictly for propaganda purposes because the idea that Hannibal was honestly considered one of the least bloodthirsty of his people was truly depressing. “Can I see my friends now?”

“I will lead you to them but I must guard you or I’ll be executed if any harm comes to you,” she chirped. It wasn’t a literal chirp but her voice was cheery, high and melodic.

It wasn’t that much of a walk. Lisa saluted the guard at Room 683 and said something in the alien language and the other opened the door. Will went in.

“Will, you’re alive!” yelled Beverly. Jimmy and Brian were busy trying to find an unguarded wine bottle while Bedelia was fending them off with the sharp end of a busted glass bottle.

“They’re mine, bitches, mine!” Bedelia said.

Jimmy and Brian paused to wave at him. “Hey, Will!” they chorused.

“Do you know what’s going on?’ said Will.

“Not really. We looked out the window and most of the streets are pretty empty except for the occasional hovercraft. A few of the restaurants seem to be open, considering that we got some excellent take-out for breakfast.” Beverly said. “What’s with the robe?”

“Prince Tenderheart took my own because he‘s buying me some new ones.”

“Who’s that?” said Brian.

“That's the translation of Hannibal's real name.”

Everybody guffawed at Hannibal’s real name. “No wonder he chose Hannibal. His real name is the total opposite of badass,” said Jimmy.

“However,” said Will. “It’s probably the only thing keeping us alive. What they consider tenderheartedness, not the name, I mean.”

“I wonder if there are any rebel forces,” said Brian.

“If there are, I doubt we’d know about it from here,” said Jimmy.

Will looked out the window, opened it and reached out, only to feel a force field. “I don’t think we can leave this way.”

“We are thirty floors up,” said Beverly. “It was never going to work.”

“In the meantime, we should ask our guards as much as we can about themselves and their home planet,” said Will.

They all agreed that it was a good idea.

“Do you have any games or a set of playing cards?” said Beverly. “The only music we have in here is classical music and the only TV we’re getting is a fake news channel that we call ‘Absolute Alien Adoration’ channel for the amount of ass kissing it does.”

“I’ll check my room and see.”

After a few hours of watching the atrocious TV news, there was a knock on their door. “Visiting time is over,” said Lisa.

Will walked back to his room, noting that it was 666. “Lisa.”

“Yes?”

“Mind if I ask you some questions about your people?”

“I can answer within specific parameters.”

“Why don’t you come in and we can sit down and talk?”

“I will enter the room but I must face the door and I must refuse all offers of food. Offering food in my culture has significant meaning.”

“Oh, really, what kind of meaning?” said Will.

“That is off limits.”

“I . . . see . . . Do you really look like humans or do you really look like reptiles or something? “

“This is our true appearance though because it frightens humans so, we keep our fangs withdrawn.”

Will went into the room and Lisa did as she said. “OK,” said Will. “How long have you guys been here, visiting our planet?”

“Oh, we’ve been visiting on and off for quite a while. The last time we visited en masse was about sixty-six million years ago.”

“What? Oh, wait, do you travel at light speed?” said Will, figuring it was merely the time dilation factor of light speed that slowed time down to a crawl inside the fast-moving vehicle while time went on at its usual pace outside. That would mean thousands of years could pass on the outside of the ship while only a year would pass on the inside of the ship. 

“Oh, no, we’re an ancient civilization.”

“Why did you visit sixty-six million years ago?”

“Dinosaurs were tasty and plentiful.”

Will then remembered that there was the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that wiped out seventy-five percent of all species including most of the dinosaurs except for the ones that were the ancestors of birds. He gasped. “You ate them all?”

“We’re a hungry bunch.”

“My world is doomed!”

“No, actually, he’s sent our orders that we are to make humans into a sustainable resource and not wipe them out. There are only limited number of planets in the universe that create tasty food. Right now, he‘s only interested in eating people who are fighting against his rule.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Will remembered his promise to Beverly and his friends and did a quick search of the hotel room. “Do you have any games or playing cards?”

“I can order some,” she said.

An idea came to Will. “Oh, could I also get games and playing cards from your planet as well?” said Will. “Preferably with translated rules and labels.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Will smiled. Perhaps now I can learn something about their culture that I can use against them.

***

“Lisa has told me of your requests. I will also be getting some books for your entertainment.” Hannibal opened a bag and pulled out a pack of playing cards, several boxes of board games and one box he didn’t recognize. 

Will pointed at the box he didn’t recognize. “What is this box?”

“You expressed interest in the games of my planet. This game is very important on my planet.”

“What kind of game is this?”

“I’ll let you look it over and see if you want to play it. I miss the game we played. You were very close to figuring my identity out before the invasion. On my planet, I have nobody to play with,” Hannibal lamented.

Will did a face palm. He thinks the FBI investigations of the Chesapeake Ripper was a game, he thought. 

***  
“Will, according to the game rules, all the penalties seem to involve doing what the other person wants sexually,” said Beverly as she reread the rules of Hannibal's game because she couldn’t believe what her eyes told her the first time. “I don’t think you should play this game.”

“I thought I was reading it wrong,” said Will. 

“Sadly, no. I think the only thing we learned from the game is that Hannibal is pretty horny for you.”

Bedelia had finally given Jimmy and Brian a bottle each so she could do things other than guard her stash. “I told you that he doesn’t understand the meaning of the word friend.”

Jimmy sighed, “We asked our guard some questions.” 

“And . . .” said Will.

“So far, he said that his people are really enjoying the cooking on this planet. I don’t meaning cooking people but the cuisines. They’re not as picky about it as Hannibal is, though. The guard outside loves the sweet-and-sour pork and the kung pao chicken he gets from the local Chinese hole-in-the-wall around the corner.”

“According to Lisa, they’ve been visiting the Earth since before the last major extinction event. Why haven’t they come up with a way to make tasty food by just pushing a button yet?” said Will.

“Also,” said Beverly. “You’d think alien protein wouldn’t agree with them. I wonder if their system is more like ours than we think.” 

Jimmy said, “Ok, so they love eating what we cook. How does this help us?”

“There was this vegetarian restaurant near the campus of the college I went to,” said Will. “They used tofu and gluten to make faux meat. I wonder if it was done well enough, we could get them to switch.”

Brian shook his head. “We can’t even get our own people to cut down on meat for their own good. How are we going to get aliens to do so? They have fangs for a reason, you know.”

Bedelia spoke up. “There’s always the nuclear option.”

“What’s that?”

“We explode several nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, make everything a bit radioactive, and create a situation where our value as food plummets,” said Bedelia in an eerily calm and cool voice. 

“We don’t have any of the launch codes,” said Will. “Also, as ideas go, I find it most unappetizing.”

Jim and Brian groaned at the pun.

“I’m sorry, it wasn’t on purpose,” said Will. I‘m spending too much damn time with Hannibal. 

***  
“So, interested in the game?” said Hannibal as he saw Will sitting at dining table for breakfast with the box sitting on the table.

“Since I’ve never played this game before,” said Will. “I think I should practice with my friends several times before I play it with you . . .”

Hannibal was quiet for a moment before he snatched up the box and put it in the bag he had next to his chair. “I shall try to find a different game.”

Will tried to hide a smile at his success at outmaneuvering Hannibal without overtly pissing him off. “I know that you all came here for the food. But since you’re such an ancient civilization, why can’t you just press a button and have a perfect roast come out?”

“There are many reasons. We once had a substance that could be molded into anything we pleased. However, our entire food system became contaminated and our people barely avoided starving to death since we no longer had any food animals or crops. After that, it was declared that we would depend purely on real food.”

“You have the resources to create a planet devoted to food animals without wiping out other planets’ ecosystems. You can take some of our cattle and pigs for this project.”

“If we hadn’t wiped out the dinosaurs, your species would never have come into existence.”

“That’s not the point!” Will huffed. “Now I’m getting rather tired of walking around in a bathrobe. I’d like to go to my house and pick up some clothes . . .”

“I bought you some already,” said Hannibal. Hannibal pulled tailored suits and shirts with matching ties out of his bags.

Will frowned. “They look like your clothes.”

“They’re in your size. They‘ll fit perfectly.”

“They’re not my style.”

“It’s an upgrade!”

***  
“Wow, those are some clothes,” said Beverly as Will walked in for another visit as if he was a model from a fashion runway.

Bedelia narrowed her eyes. “Hannibal bought you those clothes. How mini-me of him.”

“Oh, God, look who’s on the news!” said Jimmy, pointing to the TV that was on.

On the high definition television, Freddie Lounds was cheerily smiling as a network anchor. 

“Noooooooooooooo!” yelled Brian. 

“Oh, of course,” said Beverly, disgusted. 

Freddie, of course, heard none of this and announced, “The rebel leader Jack Crawford has been sighted in the Washington, DC area. If you know of his current whereabouts, please inform your local alien overlord! Also, the entire pigeon population of New York have been eaten and found delicious.”

“Ew,” said Beverly.

The guard from outside their room came inside and looked at the bottles Bedelia had placed in the corner of the room and said, “You drink this all the time. Is it tasty?”

“I don’t think . . .” said Beverly.

Bedelia looked thoughtful. “Of course, I’ll give you a taste. Just don’t complain if you don’t find it to your liking.” She poured him a glass and handed it to him.

The guard drank a swallow then his eyes lit up as if illuminated by a divine fire and he drank the rest down. “More.”

Bedelia quietly filled his glass. Everybody else was looking askance at the scene, mostly because the guard was acting giddy but also because usually getting Bedelia to share wine was like pulling teeth.

The guard began to laugh and dance in place. “May I have some more?”

“Perhaps later. Go outside for now.”

Once the guard left the room, everybody in the room started to smile at each other. Susceptibility to drunkenness, yes! 

***  
Hannibal looked unhappy when he came in one morning for his usual breakfast with Will.

“What’s wrong, Hannibal?” said Will.

Hannibal scowled. “My people have no taste. None!” He speared his breakfast sausage with his fork. 

“Why do you say that?”

“You offer them Iberian ham and they want corned beef from a can.” Hannibal popped the sausage into his mouth and chewed vigorously. “They have been most rude about what I have provided to them yet I can not kill them all.” 

Something is going wrong with the invasion, thought Will. “I heard they ate all the pigeons in New York.”

“Yes, they did. Urban street pigeons,’ said Hannibal. “My point exactly.” 

*** 

“Lisa, I don’t know how to tell you this but your breath is pretty spicy today,” said Will as he handed Lisa the tray. 

Lisa held up a large squirt bottle of sriracha hot chili sauce. “It’s delicious,” she said before squirting it straight into her mouth.

Will gasped at what she was doing then watched as she calmly licked her lips without any seemingly ill effects. Wow, thought Will. We can scratch chili off the list of their weaknesses. And so far none of the other aliens I’ve met eat like Hannibal. Maybe there’s something to his claim that even among his own people he feels isolated. 

“I know I shouldn’t ask you this but have you eaten any humans?”

Lisa hesitated before she said, “Only the ones that fired on us.” 

“How do we taste?”

Lisa made a face. “Pretty bad.”

That raised Will’s eyebrows. “Really?”

“Meat is meat but humans taste nothing like Iguanadon.” Lisa had a wistful look on her face. 

“Oh. What do the others think?”

“They’re not crazy about the way your people taste either. No offense.”

“None taken.” 

***

They finally came up with a plan where they’d get the two guards drunk, run away and see if they couldn’t somehow connect with Jack around the DC area.

“Lisa! Jim Bob! Come in and drink with us,” said Beverly said. 

After the guards pounded back almost an entire bottle each, Jimmy, Brian and Beverly looked at each other with worry. While obviously drunk, they weren’t slipping into unconsciousness. Damn, thought Beverly, if only we had vodka.

They finally closed their eyes and started to snore. 

“Finally,” said Beverly. “Guys, get into their uniforms and lets get out of here.”

***  
Unfortunately, it turned out that the hovercraft they stole could be remotely shut down then locked so it wouldn’t open and finally, programmed to return back to the hotel. 

Hannibal was standing on the steps of the hotel, smiling. “I found that all very amusing.” 

The End

Epilogue: 

Of course, what really saved the world in the end was that it turned out that the vast majority of aliens preferred humans cooking their food instead of being their food. Jack's group and other rebel forces coordinated to make food transport problematic and created work stoppages that aggravated the very hungry aliens. 

Forced to find meat that the aliens would eat, Hannibal’s scientists used the quantum theory that allowed for several universes to be adjacent to each other and found a way to bore a wormhole into universes whose quantum structures were compatible and contained dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period. Of course it meant permanently destroying the possibility of those dinosaurs ever evolving beyond a certain point in multiple continuities. Humans, wanting to survive, did not have great paroxysms of existential angst about not preventing the reduction of the number of potential outcomes of evolution in the multi-verse since it ensured their own continuing in this one. 

Earth then became the planet where the dinosaur meat was processed for consumption for the aliens since very few things could beat a Bambiraptor stuffed with figs and sausage with a side of white wine and a fiddlehead fern salad. A treaty was drawn up between the representatives of the rebel forces and Hannibal where all rebels were pardoned, people could not be kept as food or slaves or unfairly kept as prisoners and private property was to be returned. In return, humankind as a whole would work to feed their alien overlords. 

***

“So, we’re the kitchen planet of an alien empire,” said Beverly. “Great.” 

“At least we’re not the meat packing plant,” said Will. They were at a cafe near Beverly's house. 

“Will?’

Will turned to see Hannibal for the first time in months since he and the rest of the group had been released as part of the terms of the treaty. “What do you want?”

“I was wondering if you’d have dinner with me.”

“You’re a serial killer, and an alien prince who conquered my planet and pines for human flesh. Why would I ever agree to dinner with you?”

“I found your dogs.” 

A guard opened the door to Hannibal’s limo and two dogs hopped out, ran to Will and danced around him, licking him frantically. 

“Winston! Grommit!” Will yelled as he got down on his knees and hugged the two deliriously happy dogs. 

“The rest are in the limo,” said Hannibal as a couple other dogs poked their heads out the window.

“You are such a bastard.” 

“Is that a yes?”


End file.
